1. Field of the Invention
This invention generally relates to personalization of computer parts. More specifically, the preferred embodiment of the invention relates to a manufacturing system in which parts composed of common hardware but having unique microcode and vital product data do not require unique part numbers.
2. Background Art
Manufacturers have sought to leverage common parts to help reduce overall business costs and improve Return on Investment (ROI). One strategy strives to maintain brand-unique features and functions and thus the revenue associated with each brand, while leveraging common parts. Servers today are designed using more common under-the-cover industry standard parts. Both server hardware and microcode are designed as common building blocks wherever possible. The individual characteristics and functions in each operating system are used to maintain brand-unique customer value and investment protection. The adoption of a common parts strategy is driven by the need to remain profitable in an increasingly competitive marketplace. As high-performance hardware components, memory, hard disk drives (HDDs) and even processors become more widely available from multiple sources, they enable our competitors to become lower cost producers. The lower costs and business model efficiency gained through a common parts strategy provide a significant competitive advantage and therefore may not be simply a good idea, but a business imperative in the face of lower-cost industry-standard parts and reduced profit margins.
Over time, the computer industry has continued to use more common hardware in an effort to drive down development expense and other costs. Nevertheless, different companies and individual brands seek to provide product differentiation and unique functionality to attract customers and offer added value of competitors. These unique functions are increasingly implemented with brand unique microcode and Vital Product Data (VPD). When this unique code is implemented in brand unique models and featureable hardware, it can be enabled and utilized by the brand unique operating systems and applications to provide enhanced functionality and unique capabilities not available on other platforms. This facilitates brands to utilize more off-the-shelf common hardware yet still provide brand unique value-add functionality, which can allow them to command higher prices for similar features.
Vital Product Data (VPD) is information stored in nonvolatile storage in a computer, in a subsystem in a computer, or in a device in a computer that describe the element on which it resides. VPD can include common data such as part number, manufacturer, serial number, and features as well as unique company-defined and user defined data and functions. VPD is normally accessible by the computer in which the devices reside or by a network an external device.
Unique microcode and VPD can be loaded into common hardware by a part supplier in their manufacturing process to personalize the part, enable or disable functions and to assign a unique part number to these common parts event though the underlying hardware is exactly the same. This can result in dozens of part numbers associated with a common piece of hardware, all of which have to be ordered and stocked in manufacturing, increasing end-to-end costs such as inventory, scrap, and stocking of field spare parts. Additionally, it is common to have different levels of VPD and microcode co-exist simultaneous as a result of engineering changes. This again adds to the total number of unique parts that needs to be controlled and managed even though the underlying hardware is exactly the same. Changing the unique microcode and VPD may requires physically shipping the part back to the supplier and having the supplier rewrite the microcode and VPD, restamp a new PN and ship the part back to the server manufacturer for use in the systems they provide. This results in long delays and can mean missing product ship date and impact quarterly revenue especially during peak volume periods. There is normally added cost from the supplier to re-personalize and change parts for the box manufacturer.
Large manufacturing operations can have tens of thousands of unique part numbers (PNs) to manage. It is often difficult if not impossible even with the state-of-the art logistic systems to quickly identify parts that have common hardware yet different microcode and VPD. It is not uncommon for manufacturing operations to have parts constrained during peak period. Parts shortages can result even though they may have sufficient supply on hand of a part composed of the exact same hardware, but with unique microcode and VPD. A system allowing the rapid identification and re-personalization of common hardware through rewriting of unique microcode and VPD would significantly reduce peak demand parts shortages.